National Socialist Movement Rallies for S.B. 1070

Throwing their support behind Arizona's highly controversial anti-immigrant S.B. 1070 law, as many as 60 members of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) were subjected to a hail of stones and other missiles hurled by anti-racist protesters as they marched toward the Sandra Day O'Connor Federal Court Building. The NSM, which is the largest neo-Nazi group in the nation, targeted that building because it was there that a federal judge stayed major portions of the law, which would require immigrants to carry papers at all times and force police to demand those papers in many circumstances.

About 100 anti-racists clashed violently with NSM members as they marched — at one point, a woman with the NSM was struck in the head by a projectile — and police in riot gear stepped in with tear gas and pepper spray to quell the melee. Two people were arrested for throwing rocks at officers. In a heroic retelling of the day's events, the NSM sang the praises of its own "valiant members" and fulminated about the anti-racist "masked cowards" who attacked them.

After the march, the NSM crowd retired to an unknown location where they burned a swastika and admired an altar of sorts, decorated with a Nazi flag and photos (from left) of late American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, current NSM "commander" Jeff Schoep, and, naturally, a grimly determined Adolf Hitler.